spadijer said:
Totally. But still he's useless. Almost all philosophers agree with that. Mind you, however, the only thing that came out of Hegel (I believe) were the interpretations related to him (i.e. right Hegel, idealistic Hegel, left wing Hegel bla bla bla), which led utlimately to other philosophical ideas and the Hegelian dialectic (which is the only useful things I can think of and even they were a result of Hegelian scholars, not the man himself). His ideas on history are rather reasonable as well.
Historical memory was central to Hegel's philosophy, I think.
Yes, I love all the interpretations of various philosophers: Kant-Hegel (Kant as interpreted by Hegel), Marx-Hegel, Marx-Kant, Heidegger-Marx... It's all very confusing.
I still think that Hegel was suffering from mercury-poisoning madness, or something. It's when he starts to get into things like the Owl of Minerva that I tend to flick forward a couple of pages to the end of whatever crazed rant he's fallen into.
There's an Egyptologist, named Jan Assmann, who is basically exactly the same as Hegel in writing style, ideas, everything. My friends and I are constantly ripping into Hegel's and Assmann's vague tangents. When Assmann came to Australia and did a lecture, we all fell into fits of laughter when he said that Hegel was his favourite writer on history.